CS Activities Overview

CS activities enable you to record individual interactions with your customer accounts, such as:

  • A meeting that is scheduled to take place in the future
  • Any notes taken during a meeting that has already taken place
  • An AI summary of your activity data from the past six-month time period

Permission Sets

To view, edit, create, and delete CS activities, users must have one of the following permission sets assigned to their profiles:

  • CSC - Customer Success
  • CSC - Participant User

For more information, see Assigning and Removing Permission Sets.

Viewing CS Activities

You can view CS activities in:

  • Activity Tracker. For more information, see Activity Tracker Overview
  • From the CS Activity Notes tab in Value Tracker's Record Details panel
  • The CS Activities tab

You can view the activity contacts associated with a CS activity in the Related tab of the CS activity's record page.

Note:

The activities that you create are linked to accounts in your org. If you delete an account associated with a CS activity, the CS activity is not deleted but it is no longer associated with the account.

Creating CS Activities

You can create CS activities using:

  • The Create CS Activity action in the Actions panel, which is available on the Customer Success Management Workspace. This action might also be available from a record page, if your administrator has added the Actions panel to the page.
  • The Add CS Activity button in Activity Tracker.
  • The Add CS Activity Note button in Value Tracker.
  • The New list view button in the CS Activities tab.

For more information, see Creating CS Activities.

Notes:
  • Selecting the CS Summary type in the Create CS Activity window does not create a CS activity with a generated summary.

  • You can also create CS Summary activities directly from the CS Activities AI Summary window when using AI Summaries: CS Activities. This creates a CS activity with the generated summary. For more information see Generating CS Activity AI Summaries.

CS Activity Creation Guidelines

Consider these guidelines when creating CS activities.

These guidelines apply to associating CS activities with parent and child records.

When creating CS activities:

  • You must select an account for the CS activity, unless you are creating a draft activity. To associate the CS activity with a success plan, objective, objective KPI, or playbook, the accounts of the respective records must be the same.
  • You can associate CS activities with internal contacts, such as team members, and external contacts, such as stakeholders from your customer’s organization.

  • You can associate CS activities with an objective KPI if:

    • The objective KPI's parent objective matches the CS activity's objective and its playbook's objective
    • The objective KPI's parent success plan matches the CS activity's parent success plan
  • You can only associate activities with active playbooks.
Notes:
  • If a CS activity is only associated with a playbook, the Success Plan field is automatically populated with the playbook's success plan.
  • If a CS activity is associated with an objective KPI, the Account, Objective, and Success Plan fields are automatically populated with the CS activity's account, objective, and success plan.
  • CS activities cannot be included in template success plans, template objectives, and template playbooks.
Tip:

When the My Accounts checkbox is selected, you can view, search for, and select only accounts where you are a resource, along with their associated records. This checkbox is automatically selected if you are a resource on the account of any associated records. The selection is retained on the same computer, using the same browser. To select this checkbox, the currently logged-in user must be a resource on an account and have the correct permissions.

These guidelines describe which fields and field values you can view and select when creating CS activities.

Some of the CS activity fields can be automatically populated if you create CS activities:

  • From an account record page, then the Account field is automatically populated with the account that the CS activity is created from. This can be edited if required. If you change the account associated with the CS activity's parent success plan, the account on the CS activity is automatically updated.

  • From a success plan page, then the following fields are automatically populated based on the respective fields of the success plan that the CS activity is created from:

    • Success Plan
    • Account

    These fields can be edited if required.

  • From an objective record page, then the Account, Objective, and Success Plan fields are automatically populated with:

    • The objective that the CS activity is created from
    • The account, playbook, and success plan associated with the objective

  • From a playbook record page, then the Account, Objective, Playbook, and Success Plan fields are automatically populated with:

    • The playbook that the CS activity is created from
    • The account, objective, and success plan associated with the playbook

  • From Value Tracker, then the Account, Objective, and Success Plan fields are automatically populated with:

    • The objective KPI that the CS activity is created from
    • The account and success plan associated with the objective KPI's parent objective
Notes:

  • If you do not select:

    • An account, but select a success plan, objective, or playbook, the Account field is automatically populated with the account of the selected success plan, objective, or playbook.
    • A success plan, but select an objective or playbook, the Success Plan field is automatically populated with the account of the selected objective or playbook.

  • Removing a field value of a related object also removes the field values of its child objects.

    This does not apply when creating a CS activity in the New CS Activity window.
  • The available success plans are automatically filtered by the selected account. The available objectives are automatically filtered by the selected success plan, or by the selected account if no success plan is selected. The available playbooks are automatically filtered by the selected account, success plan, and objective. The available objective KPIs are automatically filtered by the selected objective and success plan.
  • The available contacts are automatically filtered by the selected account. In addition, contacts not associated with any account are also displayed. If you select a contact before selecting an account, the account is automatically populated based on the selected contact. The accounts associated with the contact and CS activity must be the same.

Draft CS Activities

You can save CS activities as drafts, which you can continue to edit until you are ready to save them as new CS activities. Draft CS activities are only accessible in the Draft Activities section in Activity Tracker. To save a CS activity as a draft, it must be created in the Create CS Activity window and have a date and summary. Saving a draft CS activity as a new CS activity deletes the draft version. Draft CS activities are retained using local storage and display when the current user accesses Activity Tracker using the same browser, on the same computer.

For more information, see Activity Tracker Overview.

Note:

You cannot save CS activity notes created in Value Tracker as drafts.

Custom Record Types

If your org uses custom record types:

  • You can select a record type for your new record, if your administrator has set up custom record types.

  • The displayed fields might vary if your org uses custom record types. For more information, contact your administrator.

  • When creating a record of a specific type, the Record Type field is automatically populated and is read-only. To display this field, your administrator must add it to the necessary page layouts.

  • If there are no record types available in your org for the CS Activity, Objective, Playbook, Playbook Task, and Success Plan objects, the fields in their related creation and edit windows use the related field sets.

For more information, see Setting up Customer Success Cloud.

Editing CS Activities

You can edit CS activities in one of the following ways:

  • From Activity Tracker. This enables you to also edit draft CS activities.
  • From the CS Activity Notes tab in Value Tracker's Record Details panel.
  • From the CS Activities tab.

For more information, see Editing CS Activities.

Notes:

  • You must edit CS activities from Activity Tracker to:

    • Edit the Contact and Type fields
    • Edit draft CS activities
  • Customer success managers can edit CS activities from Activity Tracker if their administrator has assigned the Account Layout page layout to the Customer Success Manager profile in the Account object.

  • Removing a field value of a related object also removes the field values of its child objects.

Attaching Files to CS Activities

CS activities can have one or more attachments, such as documents, images, and other files. You can view CS activity attachment files on CS activity record pages, in the Files related list in the Related tab. You can attach files to a CS activity and preview or delete them in the Manage Attachments window.

You can attach files to CS activities:

  • From Activity Tracker

  • From the CS Activity Notes tab in Value Tracker's Record Details panel

For more information, see Attaching Files to CS Activities.

Notes:
  • You can attach all file types that Salesforce supports. For more information about the supported file types and sizes, see the Salesforce Help.
  • When an attachment file is linked to multiple records, deleting it from one record does not delete it from the others. It only removes the link for the current record.
  • To delete an attachment file, you must either own it or have Collaborator access to it.

Deleting CS Activities

You can delete CS activities:

  • From the CS Activities tab

  • From the CS Activity Notes tab in Value Tracker's Record Details panel

  • From Activity Tracker
Note:

Deleting activities from the tracker also deletes the associated record and its related history tracking records.

For more information, see Deleting CS Activities.